A new study has found that “catastrophic” wildfires ravaged wealthier parts of the world in 2025, even as the total area burned globally continues to decline. According to the report, 335 million hectares were scorched last year, the second-lowest figure since 2002. The main reason is the expansion of farms in Africa, which fragments landscapes and curbs the spread of large savanna fires.
Disasters in 2025 included a massive wildfire in Scotland that burned over 100,000 hectares, setting a UK record for burned area, alongside the Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles, considered among the most destructive in US history. Record fires in Spain and Portugal consumed more than half a million hectares, while South Korea endured its largest and deadliest wildfire season ever.
The research indicates that fires accounted for more than 38% of total insured losses from weather disasters in 2025. “2025 shows that a globally ‘quiet’ fire year can still be devastating,” said Matthew Jones, a climate scientist at the University of East Anglia and lead author of the study. “We are seeing a growing disconnect between total area burned and real-world impacts.”
Changes in land use mean wildfires now burn less area than historically, but global warming is creating conditions for fires to spread, increasing danger in wildland-urban interfaces where people are most vulnerable. Extreme weather, fueled by carbon pollution, turned some fires into explosive infernos last year.
In Southern California and South Korea, strong winds and dry vegetation drove fires through populated areas, causing “unusually high death tolls, mass evacuations and major infrastructure damage.” In the Mediterranean, drought and extreme heat triggered intense blazes from Portugal to Turkey. “These conditions do not cause fires, but when they occur, we have more flammable material—because it is drier—and wind fans the flames,” said David Garcia, an applied mathematician at the University of Alicante not involved in the study. “This increases the likelihood of large fires.”
The overall decline in global burned area led to carbon dioxide emissions falling to their third-lowest level on record. However, in Canada, extreme wildfire emissions were recorded for the third consecutive year. Since 2023, boreal forests in North America have released nearly 4 billion tonnes of CO₂, exceeding total emissions from the previous 15 years combined.
Beyond heating the planet, pollutants in wildfire smoke have caused millions of deaths from inhaling toxic air. A study published in September indicated that smoke from Canada’s 2023 wildfires killed 82,000 people, choking cities across the US, Europe, and Africa.
Adrián Regos, a landscape ecologist at the Galician Biology Mission in Spain, noted that last year’s events illustrate how a relatively small number of extreme fires can dominate the ecological, social, and economic consequences of an entire fire season. “The broader pattern highlighted in this study aligns with what we observe across Southern Europe: while total area burned may fluctuate year to year, climate change is increasing the likelihood of extreme fire weather, and fuel accumulation linked to rural abandonment is making many landscapes more vulnerable to large, fast-spreading fires,” he said. “Therefore, the challenge is not just to reduce the number of fires, but to increase the resilience of landscapes and communities to extreme events.”
